Ranchi, Dec. 10: Senior Congress leader and Union minister for food processing Subodh Kant Sahay today alleged that senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha had the habit of betraying his political mentors.

Former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar and leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Lal Krishna Advani were such glaring examples.

Reacting to Yashwant’s barb that he knew Sahay’s “real place” in Delhi, the Union minister said there could be no comparison between the two. He opined that Yashwant was yet to shed his bureaucrat mentality.

“I have always worked for the benefit of the people selflessly. But let me remind Yashwant that when I became an MLA in 1978, he was just a personal assistant. (Yashwant was the principal secretary to the then Bihar chief minister late Karpoori Thakur). And everyone knows his real position in power politics. At that time, no BJP candidate even invited Yashwant to his campaign in the constituencies,” said Sahay.

According to Sahay during the mid 1980s, when Yashwant wanted to enter active politics, he (Sahay) had helped him to join the Janata Party in the capacity of office-bearer. Thereafter, he switched over to BJP.

Yashwant first became a Union minister of state in V.P. Singh’s government. Both Yashwant and Sahay were ministers in the subsequent Chandrashekhar government. While Sinha became the finance minister, Sahay was the minister of state for home (Independent charge).

Both of them locked horns against each other in 1991 for the Patna Lok Sabha seat. But the election was countermanded. The main fight was between C.P. Thakur of Congress and Inder Kumar Gujaral of Janata Party.

“I became a Union minister much before Yashwant did. Even today, I am in the Union cabinet whereas Yashwant is bare-footed. How dare he shows me my real position,” thundered Sahay.

Both Sahay and Yashwant are known for changing loyalties from time to time. Sahay was associated with the Congress as a student of Patna University but “actively” participated in anti-Congress student’s movement in 1974, which was later pioneered by late Jai Prakash Narayan.

It is widely believed that Sahay was not arrested during Emergency apparently because of his loyalty to the Congress. However in 1978, he won the Hatia Assembly seat on Janata Party ticket.

After the fall of Chandrashekhar government in 1990, he jumped from one party to another before finally returning to the Congress. Even when he associated with the Janata Party, he allegedly explored new avenues for himself.

Yashwant, too, deserted Chandrashekhar after realising that joining the BJP would be more beneficial. However, after the fall of Vajpayee government, he never refrained from criticising or even staging revolt against BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani. Insiders confide that Advani had inducted Yashwant into the BJP fold and always helped him get cream portfolios.

Yashwant and Sahay are at loggerheads with each other because the Union minister in his public meetings repeated that the real place of the BJP leaders was behind bars.